Video: Heroic garbage truck driver saves baby on runaway stroller

Seattle
-
A burly Seattle garbage truck driver, Jeff Blackburn, saved a baby's life on Thursday after his mother let go of the baby's stroller and let it roll down a hill into a busy traffic intersection

According to Daily Mail, Blackburn was driving a Cleascapes truck when he saw a woman jogging with her baby stroller on Bigelow Avenue. When the woman reached the top of the hill, she stopped at a street corner for a chat with a group of women, and while she chatted, she let go of the stroller which immediately began rolling down the hill faster and faster toward a busy traffic intersection.

KOMO4 reports Blackburn said: "She was on a hill and almost immediately when she turned the corner the stroller started to turn and roll down the hill. So I started honking the horn and speeding up so I could catch up to it before it got to the intersection, because at the bottom of the hill was a busy intersection with stop signs."

Blackburn acted quickly to avert disaster. He honked the horn of his truck repeatedly, attracting the attention of a FedEx truck that stopped in time. Quick thinking, he used his big truck to block traffic so the intersection was free for the stroller to roll across safely.

He then jumped out of his truck and ran across the road just in time to stop the stroller as it bumped over a curb.

He told KOMO4: "When I got to the bottom, I hit the brake, got out of the truck and tried to grab it. Luckily when I was honking the horn, a FedEx truck was going through the intersection and stopped because he heard the horn honking."

The video shows a woman giving a helping hand with the rescue effort.

The boy was rescued unhurt and and it seems he had enjoyed the roll down the hill. Blackburn told KOMO4: "He seemed to be having a great time rolling down the hill... he seemed to enjoy it."

Lucky that a quick thinking heroic man was in the right place at just the right time. Blackburn said the FedEx truck driver would likely not have seen the stroller. It was Blackburn's frantic honking that alerted him.

The boy's mother joined them. Blackburn said: "She came running in, she was freaked out and was shaking. I don't even think she said anything, she just grabbed the kid and ran away. She was just really, really shook up."